Shelter Tails: Spotlighting, thanking Walden volunteers

Thursday

Sep 27, 2012 at 11:26 AM

An animal shelter isn't just a building that houses homeless pets. It's a community of passionate and selfless individuals and groups working tirelessly toward a single goal: To care for those who can't care for themselves until they can find them a good home.

Mary Esparra

An animal shelter isn't just a building that houses homeless pets. It's a community of passionate and selfless individuals and groups working tirelessly toward a single goal: To care for those who can't care for themselves until they can find them a good home.

I was honored and excited to have been invited to a private open house at the Humane Society of Walden last weekend. By invitation only, the event was "just to show our appreciation and acknowledge how much we depend upon the community," said HSW President Jean Buckley, "and that everything that comes our way is so eagerly used and amazingly helpful to us."

I met Sue Orwick, a HSW volunteer who fosters for the shelter and coordinates the shelter's adoption center at PetSmart in the Town of Wallkill. Volunteers staff the center four hours each Saturday and Sunday and during the week, typically showing approximately 10 shelter cats.

"It is a really good program, and it allows us to draw from a larger area," said Orwick.

Why does she do it?

"Sometimes I get greatly overwhelmed; it's heartbreaking," she said. "But when they get homes, it's wonderful."

Orwick told me earlier that day a cat named Persia, who she'd been caring for since May, got adopted.

"I'm overjoyed, everyone is overjoyed. She's a sweetheart."

Terry Scott, owner of the Pampered Pet in Pine Bush, grooms all HSW dogs and started Bark in the Park four years ago with her husband, Leonard Lowenhaupt. With an army of family, friend and client volunteers, the June event features doggie contests, vendors, music, a petting zoo, a rabies clinic and much more at the Verkeerderkill Park in Pine Bush.

To date, the annual event has raised almost $10,000 for HSW.

"I just wanted to do something for the shelter," she said. "We do it for the critters. We love animals."

Veterinarian Dr. Delores Roeder of Otisville spays or neuters all HSW dogs at low cost, 10 to 15 at a time.

"She is wonderful," said Buckley. "She has a heart of gold; we would be lost without her."

Dr. Roeder boasts she has spayed or neutered 100,000 animals in her 25-year career, including chinchillas, sugar gliders, hamsters, gerbils and a bear cub. She also performs spaying and neutering for the Middletown and Port Jervis humane societies.

Again I ask, why?

"Some people have a calling, and my calling is to work with the shelters," she said.